The acrid and unexpungable odor of terrorism, which has
hung over Israel for many years, isnow a fact of American life. Tuesday morning Americans
were drawn into the world thatIsraelis live in every day.

Just at the moment when American political debate had
reached a nadir of frivilousness, withwrangling about nonexistent “lock boxes” and the like,
the nation’s decade-long holiday fromhistory came to a shattering end. After about half
a century of war and Cold War, Americanscame to feel, understandably, that the world was too
much with them, and they turned awayfrom it. What happened Tuesday morning, and can
happen again, underscored the abnormalityof the decade.

Terrorism is usually a compound of the tangible and the
intangible - of physical violence andpolitical symbolism. The terrorists’ targets Tuesday
were symbols not just of American power,but also its virtues. The twin towers of the World
Trade Center are, like Manhattan itself,architectural expressions of the vigor of American civilization.
The Pentagon is a symbol ofAmerica’s ability and determination to project and defend
democratic values. These targetshave drawn, like gathered lightning, the anger of the
enemies of civilization. Those enemies arealways out there.

At times like this, confused thought breeds confused action.
The American mind must not becluttered with two familiar cliches. One is that
terrorists are “desperate” people. Tuesday’sterrorists probably were akin to evil soldiers, disciplined
and motivated but not desperate.

The second cliche is that terrorism is “senseless.”
Terrorism would not be such a plague ifeither cliche were true.

Far from being senseless, much terrorism is sensible in
that it is “cost-efficient.” Or, to borrowthe language of the stock exchange, terrorism is “highly
leveraged.” Even sporadic terrorismcan necessitate the constant costly deployment of defense
against it. Furthermore, theeffectiveness of terrorism is enhanced by instant and
mass communication, especially graphicjournalism.

One purpose is to deprive a government of respect and
legitimacy by demonstrating that it isunable to guarantee public safety, the prerequisite of
all justice. The United States, no fragilething, is invulnerable to that purpose.

However, many years ago a Chinese theorist said: “kill
one, frighten 10,000.” A modern studentof terrorism has correctly said that in the age of terrorism,
the axiom should be: “Kill one,frighten 10 million.

In thinking about terrorism, democracies are sometimes
plagued by bad sociology and badphilosophy feeding upon each other. From the false
idea that extreme action must havejustification in the social environment, it is but a
short intellectual stagger to the equally falseidea that such acts can and should be eliminated by appeasement
tarted up as reasonableness.The real aim of terrorism is not to destroy people or
physical assets, still less to score anythingremotely resembling military victories. Rather,
its purpose is to demoralize.

Terrorism acquires its power from the special horror of
its randomness, and from themagnification of it by modem media, which make the perpetrators
seem the one thing they arenot - powerful. Terrorism is the tactic of the
weak.

To keep all this in perspective, Americans should focus
on the fact that such acts as Tuesday’sdo not threaten American’s social well-being or even
its physical strength. However, weaponsof mass destruction are proliferating. Some of
them, such as nuclear weapons, can be deliveredto their targets in shipping containers or suitcases
or the ubiquitous automobile. Imagine a cardriving down Fifth Avenue spewing anthrax.

The complexities of urban industrial societies make them
inherently vulnerable to well-targetedattacks that disrupt the flows and interconnectedness
of such societies. The new dependence oninformation technologies multiplies the vulnerabilities.

The grim paradox is that terrorism, a particularly primitive
act, has a symbiotic relationship withthe sophistication of its targets. And opportunities
fo macro-terrorism directed against urbanpopulations and their water, food-handling and information
systems multiply as societiesbecome more sophisticated.

There can be no immunity from these vulnerabilities, but
that is not a reason for fatalism. Aproactive policy begins with anticipation. Therefore
the first U.S. policy response must be to re-evaluate and strengthen the national intelligence assets,
particularly the CIA and FBI, which arethe sine qua non of counter terrorism.

Americans are slow to anger but mighty when angry and
their proper anger now should bealloyed with pride. They are targets because of
their virtues - principally democracy, and loyaltyto those nations which, like Israel, are embattled salients
of our virtues in a still-dangerousworld.